Yogyakarta, Indonesia, Asia Today started out with a ridiculous 3:45am wake up call so I could catch my flight at 6am. I got to the airport in plenty of time and had some time to just watch people at the airport. I figured something out that I’ve been wondering for a while. I thought some Asian people wore surgical masks to combat the smog in the cities, not true. It turns out they wear the masks because they all burp…
Tuban, Indonesia, Asia I had a great day touring Bali today! My tour guide, Bruce, picked me up at 8:30am, just after I said bye to Esther, and we headed north to see a traditional Barong dance. We arrived in Batubulan at 9:30am and had missed the first act of the dance, but it didn’t really matter. I was given a kind of playbill when I entered so I could recognize where they were in the dance, but I couldn’t…
Tuban, Indonesia, Asia I woke up this morning to a rather disappointing text message. Andrea wasn’t feeling well so she wasn’t up for going to Ubud for the day. The trip is too expensive to go on my own, so I didn’t end up getting to see it today. I did book a private tour of Bali for tomorrow though, and one of the stops is in Ubud to visit the Monkey Forest, so at least I’ll get to see…
Tuban, Indonesia, Asia Good news, I didn’t die in my sleep last night. I don’t know what that headache was all about, but it wasn’t cool. I felt fine this morning. I was meant to move out of my hotel today, and I was going to head up to Ubud until I called a few hotels only to find that they are all booked up. I decided that my better option was just to stay here for a few more…
Tuban, Indonesia, Asia I had the most incredible day diving today! It started with an early morning wake up to be picked up by the tour at 7:30am. I got on the bus and met two of my fellow divers for the day, an Italian couple named Silvia and Gabrielle. They were a very nice couple cardiologists from Genoa who have travelled all over the world together. They were very cool to talk to. We picked up another two guys…
Tuban, Indonesia, Asia I got up today hoping to have breakfast at my hotel, like they said I would last night, but they never came. That was a disappointing start to the day, but hey ho. I set off into Kuta to explore and it turns out my hotel is not that far from there at all. I am only a 10-15 minute walk to Kuta beach, but I’m far enough away that it’s fairly quiet. The only thing that…
Tuban, Indonesia, Asia I called it a night on the train at about 11pm and slept for most of the ride. I woke up a few times to check that my bags were all still where I’d left them. I have locks on all my zippers for my big backpack, but that wouldn’t stop anyone from picking the whole thing up and taking it. Of course, nothing like that happened and all was good when we pulled into KL Sentral…
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Asia I got up this morning and had to say bye to Ana. It was a sad time, but I think I’ll have to get used to this while travelling. She is heading off into a fairly sketchy part of Thailand to get up north to see a friend. I’ll feel better once I’ve heard that she made it up there without a problem. I headed out in Kota Bharu to try and find an internet cafe…
Kota Bharu, Malaysia, Asia Today was a pretty relaxed day. Ana and I checked out of the hostel and got our 20RM key deposit back, so at least we could afford to eat lunch on the island. We went back to Yellow Chairs where we ate the night before and grabbed a bite to eat with Ro (Joe already left for Thailand this morning). After lunch we just got an umbrella on the beach and chilled for a couple hours….
Pulau Perhentian Kecil, Malaysia, Asia I have had an absolutely incredible day today. A group of us met for breakfast at Amelia’s on Coral Beach and we paid for our snorkeling trip through them. Since we had eight people we got our own boat for the day, so that was pretty cool. Not surprisingly the gear that we were given from the company was all pretty poor, but I shouldn’t have expected much more for a trip that cost $11…